All practice pages/Interatomic theory/Elements
Element 46, a transition metal
A precious metal that soaks up hundreds of times its own volume of hydrogen, and the catalyst inside most gasoline car exhausts.
Period 5, group 10. The other transition metals are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.
Like other transition metals, palladium loses its outer s electrons, and often some d electrons as well, to form positive ions, and it can form more than one kind.
Mined with platinum and nickel, mostly at Norilsk in Russia and in South Africa.
William Hyde Wollaston isolated it from platinum ore in 1802 and, before announcing it, offered it anonymously for sale in a London shop in 1803 as new silver, which led other chemists to suspect a fraud. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, discovered in 1802.
Most goes into catalytic converters, especially for gasoline cars. It also goes into electronics, dental alloys, white gold jewelry and membranes that purify hydrogen. Palladium catalysts join carbon atoms together when making medicines, work recognized by the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.